Well that was one helluva storm. Lots of coastal impact and even more inland impact (as far as fatalities anyway).
Y’all drop us a line and let us know how you are faring.
(assuming, of course, that you have any power, internet or cell service)
Personally here in central AL we had about 3 inches of rain over 2 days and some breeze/gusts. No biggie overall. Lost a few small branches from a couple of pecans and had an Aldi cloche/portable greenhouse tumbleweed across the yard a bit but not as bad as it might have been.
SIL is in ATL and they got hammered in Buckhead pretty good.
Friends in Asheville NC doing OK; no power or internetz working yet. Lots of trees down. This was from a video but it wouldn’t let me post a video so this was a still frame (don’t think I know the right way but anyway…)
In the full video that tree (bunch of trees) fell over towards the street but looks like it missed a house to the left and right, and also a Subaru parked in a driveway (later in video I can’t seem to post).
Bunch of other trees down in back yards but seems like no big damage. Water in basements which is not uncommon. Places down by river and urban streams might be worse off.
Remote report from relatives north of Charlotte has noticeable but far from major damage in Davidson, NC, with a couple of big trees down on the university campus and some elsewhere. Power was out in limited areas, mostly already restored.
No big deal here in 50 miles south of Tampa and about 12 miles inland-2 inches of rain and 40-50 mph winds. Had more rain 17 inches for Debby-3rd in the nation here. People along the coast feel sorry for them as existing records for storm surge doubled for Helene.
Maybe if Gov DeDumbass hadn’t scrubbed the term climate change from all state documents and told everyone what all the weather experts have saying that the warming of the earth is creating more intense storms more would have listened and gotten left home or taken more precautions.
@Felton10@PooltoyWolf A local official upstate was reportedly telling people to GTFO before the storm or tag themselves for ease of postmortem identification later. I have no idea if that was real.
@werehatrack
I’ve seen reports of that on several news sites and some had reposts of the social medial posts from that sheriff’s office, so I am fairly certain “that was real”.
He told them to mark arms or legs with permanent markers, giving their name and address, so relatives could claim their bodies. If that’s not a serious warning, I don’t know what would be. But, people being people…
The implication was, If you’re too stupid to leave, don’t call us for help in the middle of the storm, we’re not going to put ourselves at risk to remedy your stubbornness.
@Felton10@PooltoyWolf@werehatrack yes saw it from enough sources of people uniforms that I believe it was/is real. And honestly makes sense. But no doubt the “reality check right in your face thing” (you could also write the info there) was intended as a deterrent and hopefully effective.
@PooltoyWolf same here from central Tampa, half-mile from Hillsborough River but at a higher elevation so no evacuation for us. Lots of wind, some rain and only lost power for 45 minutes. Blessed indeed!
@Kidsandliz
As I mentioned in the original post.
Kind of hoping this post will stay active for a few days as people regain time and inclination and capability…
PS (having just gone back up to re-read your original post) you expect me to remember exactly what I read initially after reading the rest of the thread???
@Kidsandliz
No problem. Just felt it was ironic. And yes I intend to try and keep this post bumped up over the next few days till things settle out and “get back to normal”. Your help in that would be appreciated.
Have some trees down. They were all very polite and missed anything important.
Was without power for 24hrs. I came out OK but many other didn’t.
Some of my coworkers faired worse, several have trees on houses, one on car. One coworker, his next door neighbour’s two story brick house destroyed… Goes to show, you puff and puff hard enough you can destroy a brick house too.
We’re all inland and nowhere near landfall… We’re not used to this sort of destruction
@OnionSoup
Yeah part of the problem with these storms is they tend to have rain at least a couple of days in advance then when it starts to get REALLY windy the trees get uprooted easily. Lost a lot of our trees locally including one in the backyard that fell across part of our house during Opal years ago. We had rain for 3 or 4 days before the winds hit… still at hurricane force over 200 mi from the coast. Neighbor across the street lost a ton of pines that he had planted with the intention of harvesting to pay for his son’s college education.
@chienfou@OnionSoup My experience with hurricanes going back 65 years is that if there’s any precip before the main winds arrive, it’s unrelated to the hurricane itself. Most of them were preceded by several days of sunny weather, and the winds always built up before the rain started to come down. But these were storms in places less than 75 miles inland; I haven’t lived farther from seawater than that since 1957.
Update from friend in Asheville. He biked to downtown there was an emergency site with power for charging and local cell/internet service; emergency food and water if needed. All neighborhood services down including power, internet, water. Cell phones in the region also out except for the emergency tower.
Photos show a lot of trees down but most seemed to avoid houses. But I’m sure some houses and cars weren’t as lucky. No injuries/deaths as far as I know. Regions with flooding are worse off; local news says they are doing helicopter rescues.
VERY north edge of its influence, GF and I were supposed to go to the Ohio Renaissance festival yesterday.
We get there in time for opening… Only to get turned away, closed, no power, trees down on roofs, camping area ( for staff) destroyed. Apparently hit with low end cat 1 winds ( somewhere in the 70mph range).
Mainly closed over food safety concerns, health department wouldn’t clear them to open.
@earlyre I live in NW Indiana and was shocked at how windy it was here. Kids asked if we should hunker down in the basement it was so crazy. No real damage that I know of other than power outages.
@earlyre 70mph winds causes lots of damage and tear apart campgrounds. Years ago as a kid we were in a tent top camper in a NC outer banks campground when a hurricane that had hit Miami came up the coast. Winds were 73mph (likely had gusts higher) which is 1mph below winds in a category one hurricane. The tent top trailer was going back and forth and up and down at the same time, the tent top ripped off. 45 gallon barrel trashcans were airborne, rain felt like being stabbed with pins.
This was in the middle of the night. Back then no national warnings like now. We packed up and decamped to an all night diner freezing our butts off in the A/C as our jackets were inside the folded up camper and we had left that at the campground due to the risk of towing it over the bridge to the mainland. Lots of wind driven damage.
The next day winds were still pretty high but nothing like the night before. As stupid kids we decided to fly our kites on the beach. The strings broke in the winds and we lost our kites. The waves were up against the sand dunes and we thought it was cool to swing on the big metal swing set and jump off into the water. I am reasonably certain our parents had no idea what we were up to. All they had told us was not to swim in the water while on the beach…and being kids we pushed the limit of that.
@chienfou@earlyre At that age I had no age nor wisdom. We were now what people call free range kids. Of course back then so were most kids. You know things like: Don’t come back inside until dinner. You bored? I have plenty of chores you can do (so we flee the house). If I hear of any trouble you got into while outside (doesn’t ask where we are going) you will have even bigger trouble back home. If your bike gets stolen because you didn’t take your lock with you, that’s not our problem (doesn’t ask where we are biking to).
And while we roamed to the lake and stream about a mile away, two different school playgrounds each 3/4 of a mile away, the corner store and bakery 3/4 of a mile away, took the bus to the movie theater 4 miles away, etc. we pretty much stayed out of trouble and made reasonably good decisions most of the time. The few near misses we had we discussed how not to let our parents find out (usually a gang of us from the neighborhood in an about 8 year age range) and how not to screw up like that again (fear of being caught or one of the younger kids tattling helped a lot). Worked pretty well with us anyway.
@earlyre@Kidsandliz
Yep. It saddens me that kids today can’t “free range” in safety as much. I remember when our kids were pre-teens and swam with the swim team (they are now 40 and 43). We would take them to swim practice in the morning and drop them off at the pool. At lunch they walked to the library for the reading program in the summer, then walked back to the pool (about 3/4 a mile away) to swim in the afternoon practice session. We would come and pick them up after that.
I have often told people in the ER I’m surprised DHR didn’t come to our house. They never ended up in the hospital or the emergency room, and were able to range pretty freely in our small town.
Thanks for everyone who is taking time to post here. It’s reassuring to know that a lot of familiar faces and names are safe and sound. Hopefully we’ll hear from a few more over the next couple of days.
Everybody stay safe/careful out there.
Asheville update. (Not there but have several friends). Still no power, city water, or home internet. Very limited cell phone service for texting started to come back so got some updates. There are emergency sites if you can get to them with free power, emergency internet, and food and water. A local grocery store (Actually part of Amazon’s Whole Foods stores) was giving out food and water for free to anyone needing it.
Just saw that Army Corps of Engineers will help city get water system working. Other than trees down (including some into houses and cars but no injuries I know of), those up on the hills are OK. In the valleys by the rivers and streams looks much worse based on a few TV pictures I’ve seen. It’s normal for river there to get high and cause minor flooding, but not on this scale.
@pmarin
Apalachicola / St George to Alligator Point has been our go-to spot for beach vacations over the last decade or so. Have a house scheduled for next April on St George so have been anxious to see how that area fared with all this. Pretty sure Alligator Point got whacked pretty well, but thankfully was to the west of center.
@el1c1a That’s really tough. I’d imagine it will be a long haul for things to get back to normal. I hope if you got flooded that you managed to save the things you value the most.
@el1c1a@Kidsandliz
Damn… Hope you are faring OK considering.
You guys are on my path from my house to the BILs in the Orlando area. Don’t have a trip planned any time soon, but will be headed that way in Dec probably.
I can remember the smell of the pines that got snapped off north of I-10 by hurricane Michael when I went down to check on my SILs house on St George. It was pretty amazing how the trees all looked like someone had taken a giant weed-eater and cut them off 20 ft in the air.
@chienfou@el1c1a Driving past Panama City, FL not all that long after a hurricane hit there some years ago seeing all the trees lying on the ground “cut off” at the same height and parallel to each other made me realize yet again the power of wind. And made me grateful I didn’t have to live through that.
@el1c1a update:
Just got power and water after 11 days. Some people in my neighborhood still without.
Gearing up for Milton now. Have family in Okeechobee, The traffic is so backed up in Florida that they will have to stay in place! Has anyone heard any news about this upcoming storm?
@el1c1a as of 10 min ago (so 4:35 EST) here is what googling told me (CBS live updates)
“CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan said the latest forecast track shows Milton making landfall over or near southern Sarasota, Florida, at some point between 10 p.m. and midnight ET as a Category 3 hurricane”
"A hurricane warning was in effect for the Florida west coast from Bonita Beach north to Suwannee River, including Tampa Bay, and the state’s east coast from the St. Lucie-Martin County line north to Ponte Vedra Beach. "
Per weather .com,
“More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week, both from Hurricane Helene and the rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it. This unheard-of amount of water is stunning experts.”
[Should this post be over on the “Blame the goat” thread?]
With as many hurricanes as I’ve been through, I would not have expected the wind damage to be this severe for as far inland as Helene took it. History is no longer an adequate predictor of how bad things can get. And the best models we have hold that it promises to get worse, for a very long time.
@ybmuG Heya! My family and I are good. We were without water for a few days but live close enough to main roads that the local utilities had service back to us quickly. Neighbors had let us run a hose from their spring fed water line in the meantime so we have had it relatively good.
Our town has lost the main roads coming in and out so truckers coming in are having some trouble but making it in most cases. I work in the next town over but the ladies that I carpool with and I have an alternate route through the backwoods we are thankful for even with the doubled commute time.
Many in the more remote locations are still without water, power, or the ability to drive out from their homes. There has been a tremendous response from local churches and organizations to open up places for people to get supplies, shower, and connect online to let family know they are ok. Some groups are also going in on atvs and on foot to check on people that haven’t had contact with anyone since everything happened.
Most of us in the Appalachias plan and prepare for winter storms but floods (especially of this magnitude) were just not on any of our minds.
We are most blessed that everyone in the family has stayed safe and that we were all together at home throughout the worst of the storm.
@tnhillbillygal Glad to hear you are all well! For those of us too far to help in person, are there agencies (preferably local) we can donate to with confidence knowing that it will actually help the people on the ground? Looks like for some this is going to be a loooong road.
Still dead center (about 20 miles) from land fall with estimated winds of 110+. Probably max impact going to be between 9pm and 2am tonight. Got everything ready to go. So fingers and toes still crossed-getting tiring as well as tornado warnings on my weather radio going off every 15 minutes.
@Felton10 looks like might be slightly ahead of schedule. Only good thing is if it’s moving fast, less time to dump so much rain in any one spot. Good luck to you.
@Felton10
Earlier today (1pm) I asked my aunt if they were evacuating from Fort Myers, she said they probably should but they have not. She also said it’s getting tiring with tornado warnings all around them. You Floridians are in our hearts, we’re all watching, sending lots of love and prayers. Go slow and be safe!
Personally here in central AL we had about 3 inches of rain over 2 days and some breeze/gusts. No biggie overall. Lost a few small branches from a couple of pecans and had an Aldi cloche/portable greenhouse tumbleweed across the yard a bit but not as bad as it might have been.
SIL is in ATL and they got hammered in Buckhead pretty good.
Not much here but just a couple miles away there was a lot of flooding and a couple house fires.
@yakkoTDI bleh.
Found out a coworker (one of my favourites) that works remote from Asheville is without all basic services.
Friends in Asheville NC doing OK; no power or internetz working yet. Lots of trees down. This was from a video but it wouldn’t let me post a video so this was a still frame (don’t think I know the right way but anyway…)
In the full video that tree (bunch of trees) fell over towards the street but looks like it missed a house to the left and right, and also a Subaru parked in a driveway (later in video I can’t seem to post).
Bunch of other trees down in back yards but seems like no big damage. Water in basements which is not uncommon. Places down by river and urban streams might be worse off.
@pmarin We can’t directly post videos here.
Remote report from relatives north of Charlotte has noticeable but far from major damage in Davidson, NC, with a couple of big trees down on the university campus and some elsewhere. Power was out in limited areas, mostly already restored.
No big deal here in 50 miles south of Tampa and about 12 miles inland-2 inches of rain and 40-50 mph winds. Had more rain 17 inches for Debby-3rd in the nation here. People along the coast feel sorry for them as existing records for storm surge doubled for Helene.
Maybe if Gov DeDumbass hadn’t scrubbed the term climate change from all state documents and told everyone what all the weather experts have saying that the warming of the earth is creating more intense storms more would have listened and gotten left home or taken more precautions.
@Felton10 I hate the man more every day.
@Felton10 @PooltoyWolf A local official upstate was reportedly telling people to GTFO before the storm or tag themselves for ease of postmortem identification later. I have no idea if that was real.
@werehatrack
I’ve seen reports of that on several news sites and some had reposts of the social medial posts from that sheriff’s office, so I am fairly certain “that was real”.
He told them to mark arms or legs with permanent markers, giving their name and address, so relatives could claim their bodies. If that’s not a serious warning, I don’t know what would be. But, people being people…
The implication was, If you’re too stupid to leave, don’t call us for help in the middle of the storm, we’re not going to put ourselves at risk to remedy your stubbornness.
@Felton10 It was like that in Tampa too where several family and extended family members live.
@PooltoyWolf @werehatrack They said on the news to write your name and SS# on your arm in magic marker. Yikes.
@Felton10 @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack yes saw it from enough sources of people uniforms that I believe it was/is real. And honestly makes sense. But no doubt the “reality check right in your face thing” (you could also write the info there) was intended as a deterrent and hopefully effective.
@Felton10 @pmarin @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack I heard the guy (sheriff or some such authority) say that on the news, so yes, real.
@Felton10 @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack
I heard that too, about tagging themselves for identification, I couldn’t believe it!
Mostly missed us here in Orlando. Got gusts up to 50 or so MPH and lots of rain, but really only damage was lots of branches in the road.
@PooltoyWolf same here from central Tampa, half-mile from Hillsborough River but at a higher elevation so no evacuation for us. Lots of wind, some rain and only lost power for 45 minutes. Blessed indeed!
@llangley @PooltoyWolf
Glad you both fared well. Especially in the Tampa area. Pinellas county had the highest fatality rate in Florida I believe!
I would suspect the ones who were in the worst of the path have no cell service to post here.
@Kidsandliz
As I mentioned in the original post.
Kind of hoping this post will stay active for a few days as people regain time and inclination and capability…
@chienfou We can always bump it for you.
PS (having just gone back up to re-read your original post) you expect me to remember exactly what I read initially after reading the rest of the thread???
@Kidsandliz
No problem. Just felt it was ironic. And yes I intend to try and keep this post bumped up over the next few days till things settle out and “get back to normal”. Your help in that would be appreciated.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz how do we actually bump something?
@chienfou @pmarin make a post in the thread.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @pmarin
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @pmarin
Yep… Like that!
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh many years ago was at a place in Florida and saw that! Though that guy seems really into it!
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @pmarin Hah!
BTW, it’s very annoying now to try to find a “bump” giphy because 99% of them are stupid fist bumps. Borrring.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @pmarin
Lump! Thump! Stump!
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @pmarin @werehatrack I did use “thump” to get the colliding cars.
Have some trees down. They were all very polite and missed anything important.
Was without power for 24hrs. I came out OK but many other didn’t.
Some of my coworkers faired worse, several have trees on houses, one on car. One coworker, his next door neighbour’s two story brick house destroyed… Goes to show, you puff and puff hard enough you can destroy a brick house too.
We’re all inland and nowhere near landfall… We’re not used to this sort of destruction
@OnionSoup
Yeah part of the problem with these storms is they tend to have rain at least a couple of days in advance then when it starts to get REALLY windy the trees get uprooted easily. Lost a lot of our trees locally including one in the backyard that fell across part of our house during Opal years ago. We had rain for 3 or 4 days before the winds hit… still at hurricane force over 200 mi from the coast. Neighbor across the street lost a ton of pines that he had planted with the intention of harvesting to pay for his son’s college education.
@chienfou @OnionSoup My experience with hurricanes going back 65 years is that if there’s any precip before the main winds arrive, it’s unrelated to the hurricane itself. Most of them were preceded by several days of sunny weather, and the winds always built up before the rain started to come down. But these were storms in places less than 75 miles inland; I haven’t lived farther from seawater than that since 1957.
Update from friend in Asheville. He biked to downtown there was an emergency site with power for charging and local cell/internet service; emergency food and water if needed. All neighborhood services down including power, internet, water. Cell phones in the region also out except for the emergency tower.
Photos show a lot of trees down but most seemed to avoid houses. But I’m sure some houses and cars weren’t as lucky. No injuries/deaths as far as I know. Regions with flooding are worse off; local news says they are doing helicopter rescues.
Bump
Bump
/giphy bump
VERY north edge of its influence, GF and I were supposed to go to the Ohio Renaissance festival yesterday.
We get there in time for opening… Only to get turned away, closed, no power, trees down on roofs, camping area ( for staff) destroyed. Apparently hit with low end cat 1 winds ( somewhere in the 70mph range).
Mainly closed over food safety concerns, health department wouldn’t clear them to open.
@earlyre I live in NW Indiana and was shocked at how windy it was here. Kids asked if we should hunker down in the basement it was so crazy. No real damage that I know of other than power outages.
@earlyre 70mph winds causes lots of damage and tear apart campgrounds. Years ago as a kid we were in a tent top camper in a NC outer banks campground when a hurricane that had hit Miami came up the coast. Winds were 73mph (likely had gusts higher) which is 1mph below winds in a category one hurricane. The tent top trailer was going back and forth and up and down at the same time, the tent top ripped off. 45 gallon barrel trashcans were airborne, rain felt like being stabbed with pins.
This was in the middle of the night. Back then no national warnings like now. We packed up and decamped to an all night diner freezing our butts off in the A/C as our jackets were inside the folded up camper and we had left that at the campground due to the risk of towing it over the bridge to the mainland. Lots of wind driven damage.
The next day winds were still pretty high but nothing like the night before. As stupid kids we decided to fly our kites on the beach. The strings broke in the winds and we lost our kites. The waves were up against the sand dunes and we thought it was cool to swing on the big metal swing set and jump off into the water. I am reasonably certain our parents had no idea what we were up to. All they had told us was not to swim in the water while on the beach…and being kids we pushed the limit of that.
@earlyre @Kidsandliz
Sounds like fun.
You know what they say:
“With age comes wisdom… but sometimes age comes alone”!
@chienfou @earlyre At that age I had no age nor wisdom.
We were now what people call free range kids. Of course back then so were most kids. You know things like: Don’t come back inside until dinner. You bored? I have plenty of chores you can do (so we flee the house). If I hear of any trouble you got into while outside (doesn’t ask where we are going) you will have even bigger trouble back home. If your bike gets stolen because you didn’t take your lock with you, that’s not our problem (doesn’t ask where we are biking to).
And while we roamed to the lake and stream about a mile away, two different school playgrounds each 3/4 of a mile away, the corner store and bakery 3/4 of a mile away, took the bus to the movie theater 4 miles away, etc. we pretty much stayed out of trouble and made reasonably good decisions most of the time. The few near misses we had we discussed how not to let our parents find out (usually a gang of us from the neighborhood in an about 8 year age range) and how not to screw up like that again (fear of being caught or one of the younger kids tattling helped a lot). Worked pretty well with us anyway.
@earlyre @Kidsandliz
Yep. It saddens me that kids today can’t “free range” in safety as much. I remember when our kids were pre-teens and swam with the swim team (they are now 40 and 43). We would take them to swim practice in the morning and drop them off at the pool. At lunch they walked to the library for the reading program in the summer, then walked back to the pool (about 3/4 a mile away) to swim in the afternoon practice session. We would come and pick them up after that.
I have often told people in the ER I’m surprised DHR didn’t come to our house. They never ended up in the hospital or the emergency room, and were able to range pretty freely in our small town.
Thanks for everyone who is taking time to post here. It’s reassuring to know that a lot of familiar faces and names are safe and sound. Hopefully we’ll hear from a few more over the next couple of days.
Everybody stay safe/careful out there.
@chienfou Hill Street Blues!! Thanks for the meh-mory!
Asheville update. (Not there but have several friends). Still no power, city water, or home internet. Very limited cell phone service for texting started to come back so got some updates. There are emergency sites if you can get to them with free power, emergency internet, and food and water. A local grocery store (Actually part of Amazon’s Whole Foods stores) was giving out food and water for free to anyone needing it.
Just saw that Army Corps of Engineers will help city get water system working. Other than trees down (including some into houses and cars but no injuries I know of), those up on the hills are OK. In the valleys by the rivers and streams looks much worse based on a few TV pictures I’ve seen. It’s normal for river there to get high and cause minor flooding, but not on this scale.
@pmarin
Apalachicola / St George to Alligator Point has been our go-to spot for beach vacations over the last decade or so. Have a house scheduled for next April on St George so have been anxious to see how that area fared with all this. Pretty sure Alligator Point got whacked pretty well, but thankfully was to the west of center.
I knew the storm would be terrible in the Florida elbow area, but wow, how it’s affected the places it went after that
Unbelievable damage and I hope all of you and your loved ones are making it through
Wow… Still a lot of power loss out there!
(Almost 2 million)
Still over 1.7 million without power over 4 days in…
Valdosta here! Direct hit. no power, water. Our town looks apocalyptic!
@el1c1a Oh no … is your house okay?
@el1c1a That’s really tough. I’d imagine it will be a long haul for things to get back to normal. I hope if you got flooded that you managed to save the things you value the most.
@el1c1a @Kidsandliz
Damn… Hope you are faring OK considering.
You guys are on my path from my house to the BILs in the Orlando area. Don’t have a trip planned any time soon, but will be headed that way in Dec probably.
I can remember the smell of the pines that got snapped off north of I-10 by hurricane Michael when I went down to check on my SILs house on St George. It was pretty amazing how the trees all looked like someone had taken a giant weed-eater and cut them off 20 ft in the air.
@chienfou @el1c1a Driving past Panama City, FL not all that long after a hurricane hit there some years ago seeing all the trees lying on the ground “cut off” at the same height and parallel to each other made me realize yet again the power of wind. And made me grateful I didn’t have to live through that.
@el1c1a update:
Just got power and water after 11 days. Some people in my neighborhood still without.
Gearing up for Milton now. Have family in Okeechobee, The traffic is so backed up in Florida that they will have to stay in place! Has anyone heard any news about this upcoming storm?
@el1c1a as of 10 min ago (so 4:35 EST) here is what googling told me (CBS live updates)
“CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan said the latest forecast track shows Milton making landfall over or near southern Sarasota, Florida, at some point between 10 p.m. and midnight ET as a Category 3 hurricane”
"A hurricane warning was in effect for the Florida west coast from Bonita Beach north to Suwannee River, including Tampa Bay, and the state’s east coast from the St. Lucie-Martin County line north to Ponte Vedra Beach. "
Updated storm surge map
Now i know why Texas has been so dry!
Per weather .com,
“More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week, both from Hurricane Helene and the rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it. This unheard-of amount of water is stunning experts.”
[Should this post be over on the “Blame the goat” thread?]
@phendrick If this dry spell goes on too long, we’re gonna have a hell of a problem with wildfires in December.
DAMN… Still over a million with no power after Helene.
Closing in on a week now.
@chienfou
: (
@f00l
yep. I can’t even imagine…
With as many hurricanes as I’ve been through, I would not have expected the wind damage to be this severe for as far inland as Helene took it. History is no longer an adequate predictor of how bad things can get. And the best models we have hold that it promises to get worse, for a very long time.
Bumping specifically calling out @tnhillbillygal
@ybmuG Heya! My family and I are good. We were without water for a few days but live close enough to main roads that the local utilities had service back to us quickly. Neighbors had let us run a hose from their spring fed water line in the meantime so we have had it relatively good.
Our town has lost the main roads coming in and out so truckers coming in are having some trouble but making it in most cases. I work in the next town over but the ladies that I carpool with and I have an alternate route through the backwoods we are thankful for even with the doubled commute time.
Many in the more remote locations are still without water, power, or the ability to drive out from their homes. There has been a tremendous response from local churches and organizations to open up places for people to get supplies, shower, and connect online to let family know they are ok. Some groups are also going in on atvs and on foot to check on people that haven’t had contact with anyone since everything happened.
Most of us in the Appalachias plan and prepare for winter storms but floods (especially of this magnitude) were just not on any of our minds.
We are most blessed that everyone in the family has stayed safe and that we were all together at home throughout the worst of the storm.
Thank you for the tag!
@tnhillbillygal Glad to hear you are all well! For those of us too far to help in person, are there agencies (preferably local) we can donate to with confidence knowing that it will actually help the people on the ground? Looks like for some this is going to be a loooong road.
Satellite night photos of the Helene-affected areas. Before and after.
@f00l That about says it all…
Still dead center (about 20 miles) from land fall with estimated winds of 110+. Probably max impact going to be between 9pm and 2am tonight. Got everything ready to go. So fingers and toes still crossed-getting tiring as well as tornado warnings on my weather radio going off every 15 minutes.
@Felton10 looks like might be slightly ahead of schedule. Only good thing is if it’s moving fast, less time to dump so much rain in any one spot. Good luck to you.
@Felton10
Earlier today (1pm) I asked my aunt if they were evacuating from Fort Myers, she said they probably should but they have not. She also said it’s getting tiring with tornado warnings all around them. You Floridians are in our hearts, we’re all watching, sending lots of love and prayers. Go slow and be safe!